Joen kanssa / Tillsammans med älven / With the River: 1
A border-crossing artistic practice and work-of-art in many parts 2022–2025 (and beyond)
I am working by the sea in Syðrugøta. Faroe Islands in September 2022. Photo by Matti Maikola.
In pt. 1: Joen kanssa / Tillsammans med älven / With the River I work individually for example with themes that entangle women’s work/labour/being and un/written histories by the Torne river and the sea around the Faroe Islands. The border river Tornionjoki (Torne river) and the seas around Tórshavn and Syðrugøta entangle in the storytelling/the artistic practice as I am thinking with the river/with the seas. These watery bodies entwine when I dive under the surface(s) (making underwater video/audio, painting experimental aquarelles with the waves, researching water management, learning to care/to make water matter, working in/with different photographic archives, walking after the flood along the Torne river to clean up the thrash that washed on the shores and using the findings for artworks, working with other Nordic artists etc.).
As a photo documentarian and a storyteller my storytelling is dissolving, “watering down” (Neimanis, 2012) and becoming something new/else and more complex. Guided by feminist new materialist/hydrofeminst thought and by many human/non-human companions I have become to “think with water”. The main partner towards this thinking have been/is the border river Torne that have changed my artistic approach and thinking. This approach derives/ entangles with an on-going storytelling process The Land of the Northern Lights that I continue working with parallel to the WTR art process.
This is an attempt to build long-term possibilities for a border-crossing artistic practice and to an entangled way of artistic work with complex themes and phenomena. As the work is in progress / on-going I have not yet any specific outcome nor a form what becomes of this exploration. I have stepped in the stream and have to see where it brings me.
I was invited last year during a a visit to the Faroe Islands by the curator Kinna Poulsen to have an an exhibition in August 2023 at Vingarðurin in Tórshavn. It became With the River, By the Seas about my work-in-progress thinking with water. Joint to the work for the exhibition I was granted a stay at the artist house Janus Kambans Hús (Listafelg Føroya) in March and August 2023 where I could work and prepare artworks on location. Gustav Packalens Mindefond supported the artist residency and the exhibition.
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My artistic work with the different parts of the art process and the work-in-progress has been supported by:
The Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland / Svenska kulturfonden @kulturfonden
Arts Promotion Centre Finland / Taiteen edistämiskeskus @taikegram
The Swedish-Finnish Cultural Foundation / Kulturfonden för Sverige och Finland @fondensverigefinland
The Finnish Danish Cultural Foundation / Suomalais-tanskalainen kulttuurirahasto
Letterstedtska föreningen – Finska avdelningen (mobility grant)